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Author

Publication Date

Type of Culminating Activity

Degree Title

Master of Science in Instructional and Performance Technology

Department

Instructional and Performance Technology

Major Advisor

Donald Winiecki

Abstract

This thesis looked at five Idaho dual-income families in an effort to (a) provide an operational definition of what is a successful dual-income family with children, and (b) begin the process of developing methods to use Human Performance Technology (HTP) strategies at the family level rather than the organizational level to examine work/family balance issues. The primary purpose of this thesis was to define the exemplary family, to facilitate the use of HPT strategies in work/family balance research.

Central in this effort was the use of ethnographic methods that emphasized empirical data collection and analysis of actual performance by actual people operating within systems without conventional research controls. HPT strategies offered a methodology that brought an ecological or holistic approach to work and family issues, examining both the outer environment, including work, community, and global influences and the family unit.

Additionally, this thesis contends that in at least one complex system, the family and its outer environment, HPT strategies are transferable. If HPT strategies are applicable to one of the most complicated human systems, they may be transferable to an endless number of other systems.